Tuesday, November 18, 2008

A Teahen Rumor I (Want To) Believe.

So, I have this column Zack Greinke all but wrapped up, was planning to post it after work today…and then Bob Dutton had to do his job and ruin everything.The bad news for me is that I now need to come up with instantaneous comment on the Mark Teahen rumors.The good news for you is that you might actually get two columns from me this week.Wonder of wonders.

You may or may not recall this, but back at the end of May, I proposed a trade between the Royals and the Cubs.In that column, I suggested that the Royals trade David DeJesus, Esteban German, and a prospect to the Cubs in exchange for Felix Pie and Ronny Cedeno.

Naturally, almost every rationale I used to justify this trade proved to be wrong.

I proposed the Royals trade DeJesus because, hitting .284/.339/.374 at the time (and just .260/.351/.372 in 2007), he wasn’t pushing the Royals towards a championship any.The next day he went 2-for-4 with a homer, and his OPS never again went as low as it was that day; he hit .317/.378/.485 from May 31st on, and today he looks like he may be a part of the solution after all.

I proposed that the Royals acquire Ronny Cedeno to play shortstop, because Tony Pena hit like a pitcher and because “We're all excited about Mike Aviles and his .338/.369/.634 line in Omaha, but 1) he's never hit this well before; 2) most people feel he can't handle shortstop in the majors; 3) he's 27 years old.”Hey, I was right about Pena.

And I proposed that the Cubs acquire DeJesus because “they've got a great lineup - but they have one massive, gaping, festering, chest wound of a hole. They have no centerfielder.”I was even more specific than that.“So now, they have Jim Edmonds, which is great except this is 2008, not 1998, and Edmonds is evoking the memory of Willie Mays in 1973 right now - a once-great player reduced to such a degree that he's almost painful to watch.”At the moment I posted the column, Edmonds was 19-for-114 on the year – that’s .167 – with one homer.He went 3-for-4 with a homer and double that night, and for the balance of the season hit .270/.388/.615.Apparently, the tonic to a prolonged slump is to have me insult your skills.

Yet with all that, as badly as I messed up the specific rationale for such a trade, today’s rumors suggest that I got the general reasons correct.The Royals would, as I suggested, benefit from trading one of their “solid” players to a contender with a specific need for a tweener – it just turns out that the player was Teahen, not DeJesus.

The Cubs did, as I pointed out in May, have a potentially fatal weakness on an otherwise excellent squad:

“The Cubs also have a problem which may not hurt them now, but will almost certainly haunt them come playoff time - even their longtime fan George Will thinks they lean too far to the right. Eight Cubs have batted 100 times or more this season - and seven of them (all but Fukudome) bat right-handed.”This lack of balance in their lineup persisted into October, and more than any other reason, the inability to stack their lineup with left-handed hitters against the Dodgers’ power right-handers led to the team being swept in the NLDS.

This problem is actually more acute for the Cubs now than ever, because that one left-handed starter – Fukudome – was completely worthless the second half of the season, and was so lost at the plate during the first two games of the NLCS that Lou Piniella had no choice but to bench him in Game 3.Fukudome’s future in Chicago is in question, which only makes their need for a left-handed bat more acute.

We know that the Royals have been shopping Teahen – never mind what Dayton Moore says – and the Cubs are a good fit; the only negative in having them as a trade partner is that they do not see Teahen as a third baseman (or at least not primarily as third baseman – his versatility is seen as an asset.)But what were the odds that two of the three players Dutton mentions as guys the Royals might be interested in were…Pie and Cedeno?

Pie is pretty much the same player he was when I talked about him back in May – a tools goof who was promoted aggressively through the minors when he probably shouldn’t, who reached the majors before he was ready (and it shows: his career line is .223/.284/.331 in almost 300 plate appearances), but whose upside is still considerable.Pie would only add to the Royals’ problems with plate discipline, and after the Mike Jacobs acquisition, it would be only too easy to rip into Moore for acquiring yet another player who doesn’t know the strike zone from a map of Alaska.The circumstances here are entirely different.Plate discipline is a problem for Jacobs, but it’s far from his only one – he has no defensive value whatsoever, he has no speed, he doesn’t hit for average.Pie, on the other hand, has shown flashes of pretty much every skill except plate discipline.

In 2007, at age 22, Pie hit .362/.410/.563 in half a season in Triple-A.Maybe that was just a hot stretch, but anyone who can hit that well at that age for that long has to be taken seriously as a prospect.He hit just .287/.336/.466 in Iowa this year, but add the two lines together, and you get a player who, in 140 games in Triple-A, hit .317 with 29 doubles, 10 triples, 19 homers, 20 steals (in 33 attempts), and even 42 walks.He’ll be 24 in February.He’s a raw lump of clay, to be sure – but I’d sure like to see if the Royals can mold that clay into an All-Star centerfielder.

Two years ago, Baseball America ranked Pie the #1 prospect in the Cubs system, and that was before he hit .352 in Triple-A.They also called him “the system’s best defensive outfielder.”That part is key – acquiring Pie would allow the Royals to move DeJesus to left field, as they’d like to, which would upgrade their defense at two positions.Using Defensive Efficiency, the Royals were middle-of-the-pack defensively last year – 16th among the 30 teams – but I’ve seen other metrics that rank the Royals much, much lower.

The Royals have a fairly fly-ball oriented pitching staff, which makes their outfield defense particularly important.They can’t do much about Jose Guillen, except to make sure that he can actually walk before they put him in the field, but if DeJesus and Pie are patrolling the other two-thirds of the outfield, they’ll be alright.

And then there’s Cedeno, who hit an empty .237 after I proposed the trade, and finished at .269/.328/.352.Cedeno now has nearly 1000 plate appearances in the majors, and his career line is .252/.289/.350.That makes him a decent utility player at best.If I thought that truly represented his talent level, I wouldn’t be the slightest bit interested in acquiring him.

Fortunately, I don’t.Cedeno will be 26 in February, close to his prime, but still at an age where sudden breakouts occur.And Cedeno, like Pie, has already proven he can hammer Triple-A pitching.He crushed the PCL in 2005, which earned him an everyday job with the Cubs in 2006.He bombed that audition, so it was back to Triple-A in 2007, and once again he hit like a guy who belonged in the majors.

Between 2005 and 2007, Cedeno played in 140 games in Triple-A (the same number that Pie played in between 2007 and 2008.)In those 140 games, he hit .357 with 29 doubles, 4 triples, 18 homers, 17 steals in 24 attempts, and 50 walks.Basically, Pie with an additional 40 points of batting average.

Is he just a Quadruple-A hitter?I have no idea.But while I wouldn’t go out of my way to acquire him, if he’s available as a throw-in, wouldn’t you love to take a flyer on him?If nothing else, he makes for a better utility player than Pena.If the Royals are concerned about Alberto Callaspo’s defense (and they are), they can either start Cedeno at 2B or start him at SS and move Aviles to 2B; either way they can get another defensive upgrade without surrendering more on offense.I could easily see Hillman using Cedeno and Callaspo in a sort of platoon at the beginning of the year, with Cedeno starting against LHP and Callaspo against RHP, and letting their performances dictate who gets more playing time as the season progresses.

But the Royals shouldn’t trade Teahen to get Cedeno.They should trade Teahen to get Pie, and if they can get Cedeno as well, that’s a heck of a coup.Six months ago, my colleague Kevin Goldstein thought I was vastly overrating DeJesus if I thought he would fetch Pie and Cedeno.If, six months later, the Royals can turn Teahen into the same package of talent…well, color me impressed.

Why would the Cubs make this trade?Ever since the NLDS sweep, there’s been an aura of desperation surrounding the team – it’s hard to overstate just how disgusted the fan base was with the team afterwards.The Cubs are in serious win-now mode, and last week traded Jose Ceda – who Goldstein ranked as their #3 prospect, and who is one of the best closer prospects anywhere in the minors – for Kevin Gregg, who got a lot of save opportunities for the Marlins last year but who would have been, like, the fourth-best reliever in the Royals’ bullpen.So they’re clearly willing to overpay in future currency for cold hard performance in the present.And as exasperating as Teahen can be at times, would it surprise anyone if he hit .280/.360/.500 in a Cubs’ uniform next year?

(Dutton also mentioned Mike Fontenot as a possible pickup instead of Cedeno.Maybe Dutton knows something we don’t, but given that Fontenot hit .305/.395/.514 last season, if they needed a corner outfielder that badly wouldn’t they just move Fontenot out there?A second baseman who just posted a 900 OPS shouldn’t be talked about as a throw-in, should he?But hey, we’ll take him too.)

The wild card here is Fukudome, who the Cubs would love to pawn off on someone else.I actually think Fukudome would be a worthwhile gamble for the Royals – he’s left-handed, and especially if the Royals trade Teahen, they’re in danger of leaning too far to the right side themselves.If nothing else, Fukudome knows the strike zone; early last year, he was widely credited for spurning the Cubs to appreciate the value of the base on balls.(The Cubs, who finished dead last in the NL in walks in 2005 and 2006, and next-to-last in 2007, led the league in walks in 2008.They drew 395 walks just two seasons ago, but this year they took 636 of them.That kind of jump may be unprecedented.)He’s a solid defensive outfielder as well.

The problem with Fukudome is his contract, which guarantees him $38 million over the next three years.I’ve been long meaning to put together a list of far-fetched trade ideas for the Royals this winter, and my favorite was to suggest trading Guillen to Chicago for Fukudome.Guillen has more power, but Fukudome does pretty much everything else better.The Cubs are desperate enough to rid themselves of Fukudome that they’d probably be willing to make the deal, and never mind what it does to their lineup balance or clubhouse chemistry.The fly in the ointment is that Fukudome’s contract runs one year longer than Guillen’s; if there’s some way around that – perhaps the Cubs pick up half of his contract in 2011 – this is a trade idea that could actually work.

That’s a trade for another day, but I thought I’d put it out there, if only because the last Royals-Cubs trade I proposed may be coming close to reality.

Nothing may come of this rumor, but there are a lot of reasons to think that Teahen-for-Pie-and-Cedeno is more than just your garden-variety trade gossip.(Not the least of which is the fact that Moore has yet to dismiss it, as he did the last Teahen rumor.)And there are a lot of reasons to think this would be a hell of a move for Moore to make.

It would only be a coup if at least one (but preferably both) of those players plays to their ability levels shown in the minors. Both have shown the ability to destroy AAA, but both have also struggled in the majors. I definitely think it's a gamble worth taking though.

There's no way they'll get both those guys in the trade. Look at Teahen's numbers and get real. We might be able to get that haul if we package somebody else from our side. I don't know who it would take. Maybe we could swindle them into taking Gload/Gobble/German/Shealy.

But in all likelihood they'd want Teahen and Mahay for Pie and Cedeno. I'd still do it.

this definitely means 1 or 2 of gahtright, teahen, and dejesus are headed out... probably teahen, but i'd prefer to keep his versatility around... gathright and crisp do not belong on the same roster, though.

While I think the Crisp-Ramirez deal is, in essence, a good one for the Royals, I wonder if Dayton is getting perhaps a BIT overconfident in his ability to reload the bullpen every year. Can he really keep finding great arms off the scrap heap EVERY year?

As solid as Crisp is, and as established as he is at the MLB level (unlike Pie), I suppose we'll always wonder if they would have been better off with the Teahen for Pie and Cedeno trade (assuming that was actually a possibility).

now that we have crisp to play CF, why not deal teahen for fontenot? i really like that deal personally. crisp and fontneot would give us some options at the top of the lineup and would improve that obp that everyone is griping about.

While losing RamRam is hard, think about who we've picked up! Remember Horacio Ramirez? He's a FA now...sign him to a minor league contract and invite to S.T.. Plus, there might be a bullpen spot for Rosa and maybe another.

Guys, as a Cub fan, we would probably trade Cedeno and/or Fontenot AND a minor league pitcher for Teahen.

We do two things really well: we overpay, and we misjudge guys from our system. Either we overestimate them (Corey Patterson), or we undervalue or write them off quickly (everyone mentioned in this column).

Rany,DM has been giving me a freaking skin rash lately (not including the brand new, undigested Crisp deal - although I like Ramirez a lot). You are really advancing the science of dermatology by the ability to reduce my rash just be the mere suggestion and hope provided of ridding ourselves of Teahen. Please let this, anything, happen in this regard.

Obviously, Dayton Moore feels any middle reliever is expendable, but Coco Crisp? What a worthless player! I thought the idea was to get a power hitting outfielder. We wind up with an older version of Joey Gathright. I hate this trade.

This is a good balance of lefty righty and gives us some hitters up and down the lineup. However, I would much rather have Furcal leading off with Crisp batting ninth. I'd also like to see Gordon take the next step and flip flop with Jacobs. Unfortunately, I think we need to be preparing ourselves for the trade with the Cubs including DeJesus instead of Teahen.

There is no way we get both Pie and Fontenot for Teahen. You are giving Teahen way to much value. Plus, where does Pie even play now with Crisp? The deal with Pie is dead. If we get anything it would be Fontenot or Cedeno and, personally, I don't want either. I'd rather roll with Callaspo and see what he can do in a full season. If he can keep his nose out of the bottle he could better both of those guys. We've created a hole in the pen now. They might flip Teahen for picthing. I wonder if we could get anybody for Gathright because he obviously has no place on this team. I'd hate to flat out cut him when the price was J.P. but they may be forced to.

The 29-year-old Crisp is going into the last year of his contract. Ramirez doesn't become arbitration elgible until 2012. You wonder if a) Crisp was the back up choice to the younger Pie b) GMDM floated the Pie rumor to get the Red Sox to accept the Crisp deal c) GMDM is still so frustrated he'd rather have the 29-year-old CF with one year on his contract than another 24-year-old prospect, who like Butler and Gordon, he'd have to wait-and-see if they'd live up to potential.

There is a great article on this trade at www.fangraphs.com Basically, they analyze the statistics for both players and have the Royals as the clear winner of this trade. If we spin Teahan for a quality middle infielder to pair with Aviles, then we have a pretty solid team where our defensive liabilities are limited to 1B/RF, where they should be. With DeJesus in left, Crisp can shade towards right to cover for Guillen.

Haven't seen it posted yet: Crisp is a big defensive upgrade in center and allows DeJesus to move into left. Or maybe Dayton keeps Teahen and moves DeJesus. Either way we get solid defense and a decen(ish) bat in center.

And why do so many people assume this means Dayton won't trade for Pie? He isn't MLB ready yet, is he? Play Crisp now, maybe pick up his option for 2010 (8 mil is much better than the 10 mil we'll be paying Guillen), and give Pie some time to prove himself in the minors.

A RamRam-for-Coco trade sounds more like two gay stripclubs trading talent rather than two MLB clubs. Seriously, it's great for KC. Ramirez was nasty but doesn't have a long-term track record of reliability. Niether does Crisp but assuming they both played to their potential, a good defensive CF and speedy leadoff hitter will impact the team so much more than a great middle reliever. No question about it.

There's no room for Teahen here. Log-jam at first & outfield and he'd only be able to be a stop-gap in the event that Gorden went down again. It's clear that he will be traded in short order. Let's send him to the Cubbies for Fontenot & a middle reliever to help fill the hole that has been created with Nunez & Ramirez, go out & grab Horatio Ramirez & we should be good to go. Then again, maybe Dayton will kick over another rock & find a gem of a pitcher like he's been prone to do. Love the trade & can't wait to see what happens next. If we can grab Fontenot we should be able to hit that magical .500 ball and possibly even contend in the AL Central next year...it's been a long road, but it's starting to be fun to be a Royals fan again!

Trading a middle reliever for a quality position player is always a good thing. The only thing I'm concerned about is that we only get Crisp for two years.

I think they have some young arms in their system they can move up to their bullpen. There's always the Rule 5 draft as well (see Soria, Joakim.)

Looking at Crisp's numbers, he seems quite a bit like Willie Wilson, though at 29-years-old, doesn't have quite Wilson's career. Wilson was 29 in 1985 when the Royals won the World Series. He has a .316 OBP that year with 43 stolen bases in 54 attempts.

I don't like this trade at all. First, is GMDM trying to corner the market on the lowest OPS's in MLB? Seriously. Crisp's OPS for the last 3 years are .702, .712, and .751. Erhlp. Sorry, I just threw up a little in my mouth. And he only has 2 years left, at a total of $13.75 mil? Seriously folks, Boston has wanted to unload...er...deal him for over a year now with Jacoby Ellsbury on the team. Crisp was just dead weight that they needed to rid themselves of. And, he averages what, about 120 games per season. Not exactly someone you can count on. With him and Dejesus on the team, Gathwrong or Shane Costa will be getting lots of PT. Yippee. And to get him, we give up a guy with a young power arm, playing at the minimum and locked up for the next 4 years? Come on. I am glad to FINALLY have some speed on this team, but don't really believe it's that easy to reload in the bullpen. Ram Ram for George of the Rose was just about the only deal of Dayton's that still looked good, except for Bannister for the murderer.

Maybe they think they have Ram Ram's replacement in Tejeda. Or maybe Dayton is just making deals for the sake of making deals, since he can't sign any free agents.

If we traded Teahen for Pie and Cedeno, drop Gathright, let Pie really learn at the major league level under Crisp (see Ellsbury), buyout Crisp at the end of next season and let Pie be our CF the next few years.

I still want them to trade Teahen for Felix Pie, if indeed he's attainable. Put him in CF, move Crisp to RF and DeJesus to LF: instantly, Greinke and Meche and Bannister are backed up by perhaps the best defensive outfield in the bigs, and Pie _might_ translate his minor league hitting numbers and become a hitting asset as well, which Jose Guillen will not be. Pay a good chunk of Guillen's salary and trade him to a team that can use him.

People here and at Royals Authority seem a lot higher on Fontenot than Cedeno, but a word of caution: Fontenot will be 29 this year, and if we factor in his 2007 performance as well as his 2008, he projects to hit like Coco Crisp. Which is pretty good given that he seems to be a strong defensive second baseman, and i'd take him as part of a trade haul; but he's NOT likely to post an OPS anywhere near .900, ever again. Unless it's a strict platoon role (again) and he gets lucky (again).

If we had an infield of Ka'aihue-Fontenot-Aviles-Gordon to go with an outfield of DeJesus-Crisp-Pie, that would be an excellent defense; put Brayan Pena at catcher, project some improvement from Billy Butler, and it'd be an okay offense. Right, i don't think it'll happen either.

There's been a lot of complaining about the Jacobs trade, and to a lesser extent, the Crisp trade. It seems pretty simple though. Moore stated that he's lost patience and wants to win now. He evaluated the team and realized they played Ross Gload at first for the majority of the year, and DeJesus, who I love, as leadoff and in CF. He's great but he's not a prototypical leadoff/CF guy. Gathright could be that guy but he's not showing it, so eliminate Moore's patience and enter Crisp. We do have potential at 1B from a bunch of guys, but again, going back to that patience, 1B had the potential of being a revolving door next year. With the two trades, you've got power at 1B, proven speed/contact at leadoff, and Gold Glove potential in CF (straight from the mouths of some of my Sox friends). We're paying a lot of salary for those things but you simply can't win consistently without them. While I'll miss Nunez and Ramirez, Nunez has the frame of 10 year old and will no doubt have some sort of injury problems always, and looking at Ramirez's career numbers, there was no guarantee he was going to repeat last year. And so maybe we don't have Crisp or Jacobs for very long. That's ok by me. Obviously this is a best case scenario but my hope is that they both do well, but that we can flip them or others if/when Pie or Gathright come around, as well as KK and/or Shealy. At any rate, these moves buy us time but in a good way, not in a Ross Gload way.

Eric, Are you serious? The Royals got a proven position player fro a freaking BULLPEN ARM. That's a WIN for the Royals. Besides, DM has proven that he can find bullpen arms almost at will. Again, it was a BULLPEN ARM. Why people overvalue BULLPEN ARMS is beyond me.

Crisp is a below-average bat and an above average CF glove - so he's worth maybe 1.5 wins a season.

That's decent, but he's on a short-term contract for not insignificant dollars. Unless Moore thinks the Royals are going to content in 2009 or 2010, this move doesn't help him.

Ramirez is a bullpen arm, but he's a good one. A smarter move would have been to trade whoever has the "proven closer" label attached to him and let Ramirez close games (so then you can trade HIM next, after he's a "proven closer").

Here is what I find so frustrating: It is now clear as day that Soria will return as the closer in '09.

This isn't exactly horrible news for Royals fans, but I don't really understand the thinking. We have a GM who says that pitching is currency, who claims to believe that relievers are fungible and who trades middle relievers as though he actually means it. So why not keep either Nunez or Ramirez, give them a shot as the 9th inning guy, and move Soria to the rotation? Isn't that why we acquired him, to be a starter?

Teahen to the Brewers for 2B Weeks. Bet on it. Milwaukee is down on the former first round draft choice and need a left handed bat. I hope they don't demand DeJesus because I think Dayton would think long and hard about it.

The BoSox got Crisp in desperation after Damon left and have pretty much been trying to get rid of him ever since. I get the sense he's a problem in the clubhouse which I guess gives Guillen someone to hang out with. And don't we want young, cheap players? Basically my rule now is WWAFD - if the Rays wouldn't trade for a guy, I don't want the Royals going after him either. GMDM: 0-2 this off season.

Dayton Moore has had plenty of time to make real and effective change during his time but has held too closely to the wrong kind of principles--thinking that Guillen-types would be good investments, giving too much leeway to defense, playing Ross Gload, holding Grudz too long, not playing prospects that didn't have great pedigrees, keeping Bell as long as he did, playing Angel the final four months of the 2006 season, Brown playing in KC in 2007, and many others. He's had time to operate this team as a real team trying to turn things around. But instead, he picked winning a precious few more games. What's more important to a team the Royals were and the Royals are? 7-12 more wins in two seasons? Or finding out what your young players can really do with opportunity given?

I'm not a fan of these two trades to be honest. HOWEVER(!!), maybe an important thing I haven't seen mentioned is that the Royals hitters (sans Jacobs and Crisp) are almost exact copies of each other. At least these guys have some kind of strength that the Royals didn't previously have--even if they're deeply flawed players.

Those of you who are evaluating this trade on the assumption that the Royals won't contend in the next couple of years need to reexamine your premises. These aren't your 1996-2007 Royals anymore. Dayton Moore thinks they can win soon, and that's why he's making trades like this.

The era of the 5-year-plan has been relegated to history in Kansas City as well as Moscow. and I for one am glad to see it.